While I take issue with the title, suggesting that environmental enforcement is in “dire straits,” the body of Professors Flatt and Collins' article does not actually evaluate enforcement, but rather enters the oft-discussed world of attempting to find metrics for measuring the effectiveness of state environmental enforcement actions. Using selected Clean Water Act (CWA) and Clean Air Act (CAA) enforcement data, the authors’ four-year survey compares certain enforcement indicators with two parameters: state per capita environmental spending and the type of state government. While the survey methodology could be challenged, their statistical analysis raises some interesting points and several of their conclusions are consistent with my own observations. Most notably, my experience meshes with their thesis that they can “empirically demonstrate that high per capita spending by states on environmental enforcement programs (at least with respect to the CAA) is strongly associated with better program compliance, and thus, presumably better environmental results.” Although the authors also intended to examine the effectiveness of cooperative-based versus deterrent-based enforcement, their conclusions are more limited but still valuable. Where, however, the article went astray, is the authors’ attempt to somehow categorize and apply state ideology as a metric.